May 31, 2005
Alarma! Online
This Mexican tabloid specializes in gory photos. They are so nasty that I can't even discuss the content of the photos without making you sick. You really don't want to look at them. Really. But that having been said, it is a wacky Mexican phenomenon.
I was first told about Alarma! by a friend of mine who has turned me on to many many things. Lest you get the wrong idea, he does complain that I don't take his book suggestions, which I must nevertheless say are quite sublime. Yet he also shares an interest in Mexico and lives right next to it. He was able to get a few, but not outside of Mexico. No, Alarma! probably won't replace the Weekly World News in your local market any time soon.
It is pornography in the sense that it appeals to that lurid interest in the grotesque, but any nudity is incidental. It's often featured at ogrish.com. Art exhibits have been named for it. One source claims it sells 15,000,000 copies per week, but I don't think that's an audited number. Still, enough people buy it to keep them in business.
In contrast to America's culture of life, Mexico does have a greater incorporation of death into their culture. It is much more visible largely in part due to the arts. Perhaps the most accessible is that of José Guadalupe Posada, but Kahlo's retablos also reflect the comfort with death that Mexico has developed through many years of exposure to iconography showing the martyrdom of saints. [see also Kahlo's El ciervo herido and Unos cuantos piquetitos]
Yet I don't mean to go too far. Alarma! has no artistic pretense. It only claims to contain "únicamente la VERDAD," and even that is questionable. Mexico does have a view of life that is more inclusive of the big adios, but this magazine is not a representative example of that perspective. And people in Mexico are not the only ones that delight in the macabre.
You won't get much insight into the Mexican psyche from it, but if you ever need evidence that it's better to avoid getting involved in organized crime, operating dangerous machinery or even driving your car, Alarma! has it, in color.
Posted by crispy at 06:24 AM | Comments (1)
May 30, 2005
English-language Guide to Mexican Law
Want to know how the Mexican government is set up? A great outline by Tusconians Francisco Avalos and Elisa Donnadieu hosted on the llrx.com website provides the basic details and several links to other locations where you can get more in-depth information.
Posted by crispy at 02:08 PM | Comments (0)
May 26, 2005
Amnesty International Says Mexico Still Has Human Rights Issues
In its annual report issued Wednesday, Amnesty International indicated that torture and illegal arrests continue to plague Mexico despite extensive government efforts to improve human rights in the country.
[Read more about the Amnesty International report in this San Diego Union Tribune article.]
This news comes as politicians from various Mexican political parties are jumping on the bandwagon to decry the ongoing violence in Mexico. Of particular concern are the attacks on women in Ciudad Juárez, where nearly 400 women have been murdered in the past ten years. The Amnesty report suggests that the problem persists because of resistance to punishing officials implicated in human rights abuses.
That politicians can simultaneously speak out against something while sweeping their own culpability under the rug is no surprise to anyone on either side of the border or political aisle. Bill Clinton proclaimed himself a defender of traditional marriage signing the Defense of Marriage Act yet his own actions with that woman went a little beyond the traditional. George W. Bush argued against affirmative action being used to guide college admissions, but didn't seem to mind when it helped him get into Yale.
The American public didn't seem to care too much about these cases, perhaps because they only further document something we all know: that politicians can be pandering hypocrites. That isn't big news, but we should all note when it happens. There's a good chance that if your elected politicians sell out people you don't care about, they're likely to sell you out too. Just ask conservatives who benefitted from Bush's being elected on moral issues only to end up frustrated by his ignoring economic matters. But that should come as no surprise to them; it's easy to whip up hysteria about the other; it's harder to tackle real problems.
All the hot air rising in Mexico isn't going to solve their dire environmental problems, strip away the camouflage that continues to shelter the corruption that lives on post-perfect dictatorship nor stop the violence and kidnappings that are frightening away tourists and their wallets. They've made a good start in cleaning out some of their closets, but if reform continues to lag by 30 years in Mexico, they'll never solve the underlying problem.
And in the United States? While constantly talking about "Democracy on the march," our current leadership is undermining America's credibility as one of the good guys by abusing human rights abroad in the name of fighting terrorism. We need to hold true to our ideals because they are right. And if they're right, they're right in all cases, not just in the ones where it's easy to act in accordance with them. Selling out for political expediency or in the name of security has proven historically to be a bad idea.
As for me, I'm choosing Mexico. At least there, the people seem willing to admit that their government is full of crap.
Posted by crispy at 12:38 PM | Comments (0)
May 25, 2005
el claroscuro
Usage:
-¿Ha perdido credibilidad el gobierno de Vicente Fox?-Yo no podría dar esa respuesta tan contundente; creo
que el gobierno tiene claroscuros; tiene aciertos y
desaciertos.
From Cerca del fracaso', la política del gobierno contra el crimen: Soberanes, Wednesday 25 May 2005, La jornada.
This doesn't appear to be the same usage of the English chiaroscuro, but rather an idiomatic use to mean something like ups and downs, pros and cons or in this case, successes and failures, in English.
Posted by crispy at 06:21 AM | Comments (0)
May 24, 2005
¿Dónde está el baño?
It's a phrase that even those whose Spanish is limited to the menu at Taco Bell know. But if you have never consumed too much tequila nor ordered your carnitas a little more picante than you should have, you may have somehow gotten along without knowing that this phrase asks, "Where is the bathroom?"
Or at least, before I went to Mexico, that's how I thought you'd ask that question.
Learning to speak a language properly is much harder than it seems. No amount of classroom education can teach you the very fine subtleties of when to use certain words instead of others. With the word el baño, if one were to look it up, he would find, among words of similar connotation, that it does mean "bathroom." In fact, if you went up to someone in Mexico and asked them, "¿Dónde está el baño?" chances are, they'd know what you wanted.
So what is wrong with calling a bathroom un baño? Nothing really, as far as making yourself understood goes. But it was curious to me that when I went to Mexico, I only saw that word used for "bathroom" on a couple of occasions.
Everywhere else, it was sanitarios.
And I have recently read that another acceptable term is excusados. Yet I'd never heard either of these before.
So why do most gringos know the bathroom as el baño? There are a few reasons why we Americans who learn Spanish as a secondary language might learn terms that are different from those actually used wherever we might go in the New World.
Spain - It seems that for years and years and years, the form of Spanish that was viewed as "proper" Spanish here in the United States was the kind spoken in Spain, and Latin American varieties were like bastard children that didn't know any better. Often textbooks and dictionaries show a bias toward Spanish vocabulary from Spain, without even mentioning Latin American terms that are used exclusively over here in the New World. Sometimes, they even tell you certain terms that are offensive (or at least naughty) in some Latin American countries. This is understandable if they are from a European company, but be aware of this when buying your dictionaries.
Generalization - In English, we have a lot of words for the pieces of furniture you sit on. You might sit on a recliner, a stool or a rocker, but they are all generally types of chairs. If you were trying to teach someone how to talk about these things without cluttering their minds with lots of different terms, you might just lump all of them together and call them all chairs. The same thing happens in Spanish textbooks.
Cognates - These are words that look or sound similar to words in English and have the same general meanings. Yet often these cognates have slight shades of meaning that they do not have in English, rendering their use a little odd when used in similar situations when we'd use them in English. The problem is, they're the easiest words to remember, because they're like the ones we use in our native language. For example, the English word except has three matching words in Spanish: menos, salvo and excepto. Because excepto is so similar to the word in English, it is easier to remember and more accessible than the other terms.
The Media - It's an old cliché in science fiction: aliens learn all they know of Earth culture from receiving our media transmissions. Yet it's not so far-fetched within our more immediate environment; the media has a great impact on the phrases we know from other languages. Just think of how much German you know from all those movies about Nazis in WWII. Now think how using many of those phrases on your trip through Germany would get you nasty looks.
If you are a student of Spanish and planning to use your Spanish in Mexico, be aware of these things. The biggest shock in my experience (and worthy of its own entry) came from trying to understand the Spanish descriptions of menu items in the restaurants in Mexico. Food terminology seems to have a lot of regional variations.
I don't know that any of the influences listed above really apply in the case of baño. My biggest fear is that in using calling the bathroom el baño, I'm using terminology that is too coarse and not what educated Spanish speakers would use. For now, when I'm north of the border, I'll go to el baño, but when in Mexico, I'll only use los sanitarios.
Posted by crispy at 06:00 AM | Comments (1)
May 23, 2005
¡Di no a las drogas!
La journada relates that a "secret" report by the Office of the Attorney General of the Republic, in conjunction with our own CIA and DEA, says Mexican drug cartels, far from being put out of business by the War on Drugs, are consolidating their operations. The article states that there are at least 100 drug rings in Mexico, and surprise! Eighty-five percent operate along the border with the United States, serving the American demand.
Pretty much anyone that knows me knows how I feel about this ridiculous War on Drugs that the United States keep propagating throughout Latin America. It's ineffective at stopping the problems associated with drug use, and it's certainly not decreasing the demand. Abroad, it's wiping out local economies and fueling civil wars. In the US, it's making criminals out of regular folks and wasting billions of taxpayer dollars.
And this is bipartisan folly. It's a rare politician that doesn't want to jump on the bandwagon and claim that she's being "hard on crime," and it seems most US citizens eat that stuff right up.
Why is it that Americans raise such a stink when they find a few thousand dollars going to pay for a woman to roll around naked on a mat while being covered in honey, but any outrage about throwing away billions on ineffective programs never gets any traction? Why?
Okay, I must admit. A naked woman rolling around in honey is much more novel than government corruption.
But my limited experience in Mexico so far has shown that their sucking up to the United States and our drug policies has decreased neither demand nor availability. And the majority of people there see the whole thing as an American problem, because that's where the demand is. Honestly, Mexicans have much bigger problems to deal with in their daily lives. Yet it's Mexican citizens that have to get off their cross-country busses every time they pass into another state so that the military can rummage through their bags.
Posted by crispy at 01:53 PM | Comments (0)
May 20, 2005
Mexican Simpsons Actors On Strike
The voice actors who play the Simpsons en español have been on strike for six months, arguing that there are only three of them doing all the voices and they are being kept on temporary contracts. They are not even complaining about the fact they only earn about $55 USD per episode.
Más: http://www.todito.com/paginas/noticias/175077.html
Posted by crispy at 09:37 PM | Comments (2)
May 17, 2005
Colombian Town Outlaws Gossip
Psst. Hey Bud. Yeah, you. Word's out on the street that the clink zips loose lips in Colombia.
Posted by crispy at 10:00 AM | Comments (1)
Tom Tomorrow and This Modern World
To keep reassuring myself that I'm not the only one out there that thinks all this stuff is crazy, I read the comic This Modern World by Tom Tomorrow. There's also a blog and an archive of previous years.
Posted by crispy at 07:00 AM | Comments (0)
The Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act of 2005
Last Thursday, 12 May 2005, Senators McCain and Kennedy, and Representatives Kolbe, Flake and Gutierrez, joined by Senators Brownback and Lieberman, introduced The Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act of 2005. This bicameral and bipartisan legislation is being touted by its sponsors as a way to curb illegal immigration and tighten border security while offering better protection for documented workers. The full text of the legislation can be found through http://thomas.loc.gov/.
According to a brief summary provided by the staff of the legislation's key congressional sponsors, several different problems with the current immigration situation will be addressed.
Border security will be enhanced by better coordination of border authorities and the development of multilateral partnerships to provide a "North American security perimiter."
A new temporary visa program will be developed, which will include the H-A5 visa for jobs that require few or no technical skills. Applicants must pay a $500 fee, prove that they have a job waiting in the United States and clear various checks. The H-A5 will be valid for three years and can be renewed once for a total of six years, at which time the worker must return home or be in the pipeline for a green card. The H-B5 visa is for undocumented immigrants already in the United States, who can apply on the date of introduction for a legal, temporary six-year stay. Their spouses and children will also be eligible.
The legislation recognizes and hopes to promote circular migration patterns, wherein the temporary workers are encouraged to return home after their stay. An important part of this includes "encouragement" of the United States government to work with Mexico to promote economic opportunity and better healthcare services within Mexico, in order to reduce pressure for workers to migrate to the United States.
Current law is extended to fund medical coverage for the new visa type holders at medical facilities that provide emergency care to undocumented immigrants, but the authors of the bill are very quick to point out that no new benefits are extended to immigrants through this program.
The bill has been passed on for review to the Judiciary, Homeland Security, International Relations, Energy and Commerce, and Education and the Workforce committees.
Posted by crispy at 06:00 AM | Comments (0)
May 16, 2005
President Fox Accused of Racism
La opinión, the Spanish-language newspaper out of Los Angeles, reports today that Mexican president Vicente Fox is scurrying to recover from racist remarks he said to a group of Texas businessmen that were meeting in Mexico. He said that Mexican immigrants to the United States were willing to take jobs "that not even Blacks want to do in the United States."
It is a poor choice of words by the president, who is a member of the conservative political party in Mexico, the Partido Acción Nacional or PAN, whose election in 2000 marked the end of a 76-year rule by the Partido Revolucionario Institucional or PRI in Mexico. Fox has tread carefully during his presidency, keeping his personal convictions at bay: he is against abortion and secular education, he's anti-gay and many women's rights groups in Mexico consider him to be a misogynist. However, as a smart politician, he has used this to his advantage within his party while presenting a different face to the Mexican public, claiming in one speech that he is committed to maintaining the liberty, diversity and pluralism of Mexican society. After PAN ran a homophobic ad that they subsequently pulled, they issed another ad in newspapers that stated that under a Fox administration, people could live in Mexico "without masks."
So one would think that Fox would be smart enough to avoid singling out any particular minority as the one with the people expected to take crappy jobs in the United States. Perhaps Texas' reputation of being a state full of bigots extends in all directions? Maybe he thought that in talking to a group of Texan business leaders, it was like talking to his fellow PAN members behind closed doors? In any case, it doesn't seem very politically adept for Fox to put forth the idea that "brown is the new black" in modern-day America, no matter which side of the border he's on. Blacks are outraged and rightfully so, since the truth of the matter is that Mexicans are taking jobs that nobody particularly wants. What American of any race is thrilled about being a busboy, a maid or the person cleaning Wal-Mart after hours? Mexican immigrants to the United States are taking these jobs because they are better than the jobs they can get within Mexico, pure and simple. They are not fulfilling some noble duty by taking on the undesirable jobs that need to be done but nobody else wants.
Immigration is a complex economic issue with a long history. The American economy has long depended on transient labor whenever the need arises. Once dependence on it lessens, we tend to repatriate Mexicans or raise a stink about how they are "stealing" American jobs. This is the source of the love-hate relationship we have with Mexico and the immigrant labor issue, and by dancing around it in an effort to play nice with the United States, Fox is doing a disservice to both countries. By saying that Blacks are the ones that should be taking these low-paying jobs in America, he has thoroughly confused the issue and obscured any legitimacy that he has in speaking about the real inequities that exist in the labor policies of the United States.
To read more about this story in English, see the Washington Post article.
Posted by crispy at 12:28 PM | Comments (3)
May 15, 2005
I Thought You All Might Begin Your Tour Here
Let's take a look at some statistics on the country of Mexico.
According to the CIA World Factbook, of Mexico's 742,490 square miles of land, consisting of 31 states and the Federal District, only 12% (or 89,098 square miles) is arable land. Out of the population of 106,202,903 (est. July 2005), 63.3% of the people are between the ages of 15-64, and 31.1% of them are under the age of 15. It's a very young country.
As for the ethnic breakdown, 60% are mestizo (Amerindian-Spanish), 30% are Amerindian or predominantly Amerindian, 9% are white and "other" makes up the remaining 1%. According to a U.S. Consular Service survey conducted in 1999, some 441,680 gringos were living in Mexico at that time. Maybe the re-election (or some might argue, the first election) of George W. Bush caused many people to consider life south of the border, as it did for Shawn and me. In the year 2000 there seemed to be many celebrity dissidents with their bags packed, ready to leave the country if Bush were elected. Yet it seems that apart from Pierre Salinger, who did in fact move to France, such grand posturing was nothing but a lot of hot air.
Yet Americans are not the only ones full of talk and no action; although Mexico is a predominantly Catholic country (89%), only 15% of Catholics attend mass regularly. You would never know that to look at the representations of Mexico in the popular media, but that is purely an artifact of aesthetics. There may be nothing sexier than a lapsed Catholic, but the real thing makes for better stories. So much suffering, so easy to sin, all that kneeling in front of a half-naked figure of Christ - it's the stuff Hollywood dreams are made of.
In economic matters, Mexico ranks 64th among the world's economies as measured by gross domestic product (GDP) at purchasing power parity (PPP) per capita with $10,090 (USD, 2005). This puts it behind Chile (57th with $11,537) and Costa Rica (63rd with $10,316), but ahead of Uruguay (65th with $9,619), Panama (81st with $7,327) and Colombia (82nd with $7,303).
Spanish is the official language of Mexico, but 7% of the population speaks one of the 62 officially-recognized Amerindian languages. Yet curiously enough, in Chipilio, within the state of Puebla, people whose ancestors immigrated to Mexico from Italy still speak the Feltrino-Bellunese variant of the Venitian dialect.
Mexicans use 16 million hard-wired phones and 28 million cell phones. Telmex is the biggest phone company (it owns 90% of those hard-wired lines), and it is partnered with SBC Communications. As with much of Mexico's infrastructure, there are no official carrier regulations, but rather a set of private agreements among only the three largest carriers. As of 1999, there were 167 Internet Service Providers in Mexico, and nowadays you can easily get broadband service in the larger cities. They have 31 million radios receiving their 865 AM stations, 500 FM stations and 13 shortwave stations. They have 26 million televisions receiving 561 broadcast stations and 143 cable systems.
The 16,268 miles of railroad in Mexico have fallen into disuse because their private operators have gone bankrupt. Instead, most Mexicans get around by bus service, the quality of which can vary greatly from bus line to bus line and even bus to bus. Interestingly enough, the government has been privatizing ports in Mexico to increase their efficiency and help productivity, and these efforts have been so successful that they have privatized most of the airports also.
That's a good start. Obviously we'll add more facts and figures as we continue our examination of life in Mexico, but I thought it would be handy to have these basics all together in one place.
Posted by crispy at 04:21 PM | Comments (0)
May 13, 2005
The Land of the Flee
So as you may or may not have heard, Shawn and I are moving to Mexico.
The answers you would get if you were to ask us why would depend on which one of us you are asking and how long you could maintain your interest in the subject. In this blog we'll discuss many of the reasons in more digestable chunks, and you can chart our journey along with us. We'll discuss many aspects of Mexican history, politics, the people, the food - oh! the food! - art, literature and of course, Spanish. Commentary and questions are always welcome.
At present, our scheduled departure date is October. We have so much to do before then to be ready to go, like packing up all our things and finding someplace to put them, picking which books we want to afford shipping to Mexico and learning once and for all which verbs require use of the neutral object when referring to a previously stated idea. Of course, the work won't end once we get to Guadalajara; then we have to find an apartment, get furniture, come up with some way to pay the bills and find a place where we can buy Topo Chico. You will be there at every step of the way, having your shoes shined in the plaza and catching up on the day's news in El informador over an Americano at the Madoka. Don't forget - if you want ice in your water, you have to ask for it.
Perhaps somewhere along the way your wanderlust will stir and you'll decide that you want to move to Mexico too. And why not? Warm gentle evenings sipping a Bohemia outside an old church listening to mariachi singing timeless songs of love found and lost can be pretty alluring. If so, give me a call. I know this taxi driver whose brother-in-law's has a co-worker who is trying to rent a charming little cottage by the lake, and it even comes with a few chickens.
Posted by crispy at 06:22 PM | Comments (0)